An automatic door system includes a door for closing and opening a doorway. The door is driven by a motor which is controlled by a control unit to drive the door to open when a sensor system associated with the door system senses an object approaching the door. The motor is also controlled to close the door when the sensor system senses the leaving of the object from the door.
An automatic door system includes various constituent devices including a door, a motor, a sensor system, and a control unit. Each of these constituent devices is formed of various components. After a long use of the door system, the constituents and their components may have been degraded, and the environment of the door system may have changed. As a result, the door may not open or close in a normal way, or may not open or close at all. A repairman, then, has to inspect the door system to find defective devices or components and replace them with new ones, or return the environment of the door system to the original environment as much as possible.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (KOKAI) No. HEI 4-203187 discloses a technique in which data relating to the state of a door system is derived and stored in a non-volatile memory, and the stored data in the non-volatile memory is displayed on a display. From the information displayed on the display, the repairman can gather information as to what devices or components cause the failure of the door system.
However, the information displayed on the display in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (KOKAI) No. HEI 4-203187 is information relating to the door operating state, and it is not direct indication of devices and components causing the failure or malfunction, nor it directly indicates if a change in the environment of the door system is a cause of the malfunction of the door. The repairman can only guess the cause for the failure of the door from the display and, therefore, he has to inspect the system to find out the actual cause. Accordingly, it requires a long time for the door system to be repaired.
Even if the repairman can find some device to be the cause for the failure or malfunction, he may not be able to find what component of the device does not operate properly. In such a case, he will replace the device with a new one, and then send the removed device to the manufacturer. The manufacturer, then, will inspect the device to find out defective component, but it will take a relatively long time even for the manufacturer to find and replace the defective component.
Japanese Unexamined UM Publication (KOKAI) No. SHO 63-83384 discloses an automatic door system which includes a failure detecting apparatus which can detect failure or malfunction of a door, and if the door system is found to fail or malfunction, the information is sent to a maintenance man or company via a modem and a telephone line. The technique disclosed in this UM Publication, too, can find only events of a door, such as failure of the door in opening or closing. Accordingly, it is accompanied by the same type of problems discussed above.
An object of the present invention is to provide an automatic door system with self-diagnosing function, which can find for itself failure or malfunction of a respective one of constituent devices or components of a door system, so that door repairing efficiency can be improved.
In some cases, failure or malfunction of door may not continue, but may occur only when particular conditions are met. For instance, disturbance light may be incident on an optical object sensor at a particular time of day on a particular day, and such disturbance light may cause the door system to fail to operate properly. In such a case, replacement of a sensor cannot remove malfunction of the door. It may be possible, therefore, to determine the particular conditions to be met for the malfunction, by knowing the time of day and the date when the malfunction or failure of the door occurs.
Therefore another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic door system with self-diagnosing function, which can find for itself failure or malfunction of a respective one of constituent devices or components, and can store the time when such failure occurs, to facilitate determination of particular causes for the failure or malfunction, whereby door repairing efficiency is improved.
If the automatic door system is let to continue operating even when failure or malfunction occurs, such failure or malfunction may become more serious, which requires repairs to a larger extent.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an automatic door system with self-diagnosing function, which can prevent failure or malfunction from becoming worse.